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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29405406">the center of all my poems</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/nasa/pseuds/nasa'>nasa</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>the poetic condition [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Old Guard (Movie 2020)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Established Relationship, Fluff, I tried my best, M/M, Poetry, Slice of Life, for implying his writing is as bad as mine, my deepest apologies to the fictional character yusuf al-kaysani, there is a poem in this, which i wrote</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 10:27:01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,197</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29405406</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/nasa/pseuds/nasa</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>“I have told you before that Joe writes poetry, yes?”</p><p>“Yeah,” Nile says. “I mean, you didn’t need to tell me, that man sprouts metaphors out of his ass, but, yeah, you mentioned it. Why?”</p><p>“Well.” There’s a little click as the metal lid of the box unlocks. “Joe has written a lot of poetry, over the last nine hundred years, and he can’t travel with all of it. Hence —” With a wrenching, too-hard tug, Nicky manages to get the lid of the metal box free. “This.”</p><p>-</p><p>Nicky and Joe take Nile to one of their old safehouses where some of Joe's poetry is stored.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>the poetic condition [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2160159</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>179</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>the center of all my poems</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>You do not have to have read the first story in this series to understand this, but they're very similar stories, so if you like this, you might want to check it out. That story was Joe's perspective on Nicky's attempts at writing poetry; this is the spiritual follow-up showing what Nicky thinks of Joe's poems.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p1">Andy has always scoffed at the number and luxury of Joe and Nicky’s safehouses. Really, they’re not that special — one bedroom shacks in the wilderness made of stone and brick with a simple hearth instead of a stove and a garden Nicky tries to tend when they visit, which inevitably runs out of control by the time they return. By modern standards, they’re positively medieval — but then, Joe and Nicky mostly <em>did </em>acquire them during the Middle Ages, and compared to Andy’s caves and dug-out underground shelters, they’re practically opulent.</p><p class="p1">It doesn’t stop Nile from wrinkling her nose the first time they take her to their house in Czechia and she has to duck below a vine of ivy to walk through the front door. “When’s the last time you came here?” she asks, and Nicky looks to Joe. Joe tilts his head.</p><p class="p1">“The sixties, maybe?”</p><p class="p1">“1860s,” Nicky clarifies. “Right after the Franco-Austria War ended.”</p><p class="p1">“I’m sorry,” Nile says, “are you saying the last time you were here, <em>slavery </em>was still legal?”</p><p class="p1">“In some states,” Joe allows.</p><p class="p1">Nile shakes her head. “Wow. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but you two are worse than Andy.”</p><p class="p1">“Hey,” Joe protests half-heartedly as he passes her, dropping their bags on the stone hearth in front of the fireplace. “If you like her caves so much, you could’ve gone with her to Mongolia.”</p><p class="p1">Nile ignores him, moving forward into the living room, whose walls are stacked with rotted bookshelves. “I mean, really,” she says, bending to examine a bottle covered in some sort of musty green algae. “I didn’t realize you were starting me off so strong. Was the Charlie safehouse the nicest one you had?”</p><p class="p1">Nicky deliberately doesn’t look at Joe. “That was Booker’s safehouse,” he says, voice tight.</p><p class="p1">Nile’s hand drops from the bottle. “Oh.” She glances between him and Joe, then clears her throat. “Well, I bet we need firewood for that old thing, right? Anyone have a hatchet?”</p><p class="p1">Joe tries to convince Nile she doesn’t need to go looking — “It’s really not a problem, we can handle it, you relax,” — but Nile insists she wants to get her ‘Girl Scout’ on, whatever that is, and Nicky’s the one to find the old axe under the kitchen floorboards and show her which kind of trees are best to cut. “She’ll need to learn sometime,” he tells Joe after she’s out of earshot, and Joe sighs and kisses his cheek.</p><p class="p1">“I suppose I’m grocery shopping then,” he says.</p><p class="p1">“And maybe get some new sheets, too,” Nicky says, opening a wooden chest and finding their blankets half-devoured by moths. “I suspect the matches are ruined as well.”</p><p class="p1">“If we’re camping, I’m getting marshmallows,” Joe says, and Nicky smiles.</p><p class="p1">“I would expect nothing less.”</p><p class="p1">While Joe’s off getting food, and Nile’s stomping through the woods like an intrepid jungle explorer, Nicky sorts through the artifacts they’d left the last time they were here. Most of it is, unfortunately, ruined — the sheets, for one, and all the firestarting equipment, and all the wooden bowls and spoons, which have rotted with age. Most of their things, really, are ruined. Only a few are salvageable: a small green bottle Nicky remembers being given by a girl in the village a few miles over; a rusted silver ring he finds between two floorboards that Joe must have lost the last time they were here; and, tucked behind a curled ball of ivy on one of the bookshelves, a locked metal box.</p><p class="p1">Nicky’s heart leaps in his chest. He remembers what this box holds.</p><p class="p1">Gingerly, Nicky removes the box from the shelf, setting it down carefully on the floor before the fireplace. He can’t remember where he left the key, if he left it here at all; he takes his lock pick set from his pocket and very, very cautiously sets about loosening the lock. It’s probably unnecessary. The contents of the box have probably decayed despite the years, and when it opens it, he’ll find himself disappointed —</p><p class="p1">“Okay, was nobody going to tell me there are five million stinging nettles in that forest?”</p><p class="p1">Nicky doesn’t look away from his box. He hears rather than sees the way Nile must pause. “Nicky?”</p><p class="p1">“Come here,” Nicky offers, and a moment later she’s crouching beside him. “I have told you before that Joe writes poetry, yes?”</p><p class="p1">“Yeah,” Nile says. “I mean, you didn’t need to tell me, that man sprouts metaphors out of his ass, but, yeah, you mentioned it. Why?”</p><p class="p1">“Well.” There’s a little click and the metal lid of the box unlocks. It’s in remarkably good condition, after all these years, but the corners are still rusty, and it doesn’t spring loose the way Nicky vaguely remembers it used to. “Joe has written a lot of poetry, over the last nine hundred years, and he can’t travel with all of it. Hence —” With a wrenching, too-hard tug, Nicky manages to get the lid of the metal box free. Rusty scrapings fall to the carpet. “This.”</p><p class="p1">Inside the box is a stack of yellowed paper. They are, remarkably, undamaged: though the box was rusted, it seems to have served its purpose of preventing the water from getting through to the paper, and on the very first page, Nicky can see his name. <em>My dearest Nicolo, </em>the first line reads; <em>these poems were written for you between the years 1789 and 1821. I have picked all the ugly ones out; forgive me, I know you do hate when I get picky, but it’s such a shame to compare ugly work to someone of your beauty. I love you. Yours always, Yusuf.</em></p><p class="p1">“Are these -“ Nile asks, already sorting through the first few papers.</p><p class="p1">“Yes,” Nicky says. “All the best poems that Yusuf wrote for me, during that period. Best by his measure, at least. We have disagreed before.”</p><p class="p1">“Nicky, this is insane,” Nile says, rifling through the stacks. They’re mostly in Arabic and Italian, with the occasional French piece thrown in — they had spent a lot of time in France, at that time, with Booker — so Nile can’t read any of them, but she’s young enough that she seems to find novelty in their age alone. “Does he always write this much about you?”</p><p class="p1">Nicky smiles. “Yes,” he says. “My Yusuf has created quite a library over the years. We tried to count, once — he used to average a poem a day. The numbers got ridiculous rather quickly.”</p><p class="p1">“Where do you keep them all?”</p><p class="p1">Nicky shrugs. “Little boxes like this one, mostly. We’ve started digitizing them recently, but it’s been slow going — they’re so old, they’re delicate, and most of them are scattered in random places. It takes time just to find them, let alone to scan them or type them up, find a place to keep them safe.”</p><p class="p1">“I’d like to help.” Nicky glances up at Nile and finds her looking at him with an unexpectedly earnest expression. “This is really sweet, Nicky. It’d be a shame if any of them got lost.”</p><p class="p1">Nicky smiles. “Yes,” he agrees. “It would.”</p><p class="p1">When Yusuf gets home, not long after, he finds them still sitting there, the papers scattered around them like snowdrifts. “My heart!” he exclaims. “You found my poetry!”</p><p class="p1">“It has survived remarkably well,” Nicky says, leaning up to accept the kiss Yusuf drops on his lips. “Nile offered to help us preserve them. She has some ideas about how we can speed up the process.”</p><p class="p1">“No promises,” Nile says, and gets a smacking kiss on the crown of her head from Yusuf as thanks.</p><p class="p1">“Did you find the best one?” Yusuf asks over his shoulder as he goes to set the grocery bags down on what’s left of the kitchen table.</p><p class="p1">“Which one was that?” Nile asks, but Nicky is already digging.</p><p class="p1">“It was from Yusuf’s blue period,” Nicky says, thumbing through a stack of papers. “We were separated for a few months and it made us both rather — well. He wrote me half a dozen poems a day, I think. But there was one in particular, written right after we reunited — here.”</p><p class="p1">The words have faded some with age, but Nicky can still make them out mostly clearly:</p><p class="p1"> </p><p class="p1">
  <em>you, who took a knife to my throat</em>
</p><p class="p1">
  <em>then freed my breath with your lips:</em>
</p><p class="p1">
  <em>you have pulled the dream from me now,</em>
</p><p class="p1">
  <em>like sugar between mine eyes. in a moment,</em>
</p><p class="p1">
  <em>I will follow you — away from this house,</em>
</p><p class="p1">
  <em>and its trees just like trellises,</em>
</p><p class="p1">
  <em>towards the dark wave of black upon which</em>
</p><p class="p1">
  <em>you dance. in that moment, I will twist round you</em>
</p><p class="p1">
  <em>and the sleeping valley of your form,</em>
</p><p class="p1">
  <em>curling like a cat round your heels.</em>
</p><p class="p1"> </p><p class="p1">
  <em>in this moment, I splay my hand on your cheek.</em>
</p><p class="p1">
  <em>you are like a tulip in the nighttime,</em>
</p><p class="p1">
  <em>opening under the soft light of the moon.</em>
</p><p class="p1"> </p><p class="p1">“How many languages is that?” Nile asks, nodding to the page. “That’s gotta be, like, at least seven.”</p><p class="p1">“Nine, I believe,” Nicky corrects. “The nine languages most important to us, at the time.”</p><p class="p1">“Why limit yourself to one when you have so many options?” Joe offers philosophically.</p><p class="p1">“Uh, so people can <em>read</em> it,” Nile says. “I mean, I know I’m worse than most, but I doubt anyone alive knows what this means. Other than Andy, or whatever.”</p><p class="p1">“And me,” Nicky points out.</p><p class="p1">“Who else would I want to look at it?” Joe says. “I wrote them for Nicolo. All that matters is that he understands.”</p><p class="p1">“I think I’m going to vomit,” Nile announces.</p><p class="p1">Nicky suppresses a grin, rising gracefully to his feet to go help Yusuf with the groceries. He picks carefully around the stacks of poems, which flutter in the light breeze from the open window like dropped feathers. Yusuf is puling food out of the paper sacks: cans of black beans, bags of rice, a plastic net of oranges. Nicky slides up behind him, pressing a kiss to the nape of Yusuf’s neck, smiling against his skin.</p><p class="p1">“I think it would be nice,” Nicky says quietly, “To have a digital copy to carry around all the time. Don’t you think?”</p><p class="p1">Yusuf smiles at him. “You just like bragging to strangers that your husband is a poet,” he says fondly, raising a hand to brush a speck of dust from Nicky’s cheek.</p><p class="p1">“Yes,” Nicky says, unashamed. “And if everyone had a husband such as mine, they’d all be braggarts too.”</p><p class="p1">Yusuf laughs, cheeks flushed with pleasure. “Is this a hint that I should start writing again?” he asks. “I’m sure I have a quill around here somewhere...”</p><p class="p1">“Please do not tell me in the year of our lord 2021 you actually write with a quill and parchment,” Nile says.</p><p class="p1">“It’s romantic,” Joe says.</p><p class="p1">Nile huffs incredulously. “<em>Romantic? </em>It’s inefficient is what it is. Where do you even buy quills anymore? Do you make them? Do you spend hours of your life sitting in front of a fire carving the feather of a bird into a weird stuffy thing that can’t even hold very much ink, instead of just buying a Bic pen at the drugstore like a normal human being?”</p><p class="p1">Yusuf looks to Nicky for support. Nicky admits, “She has a point.”</p><p class="p1">Yusuf swoons dramatically, pressing his hand to his chest. “Betrayed by my own love!” he cries. “See if I write you any poems now!”</p><p class="p1">Nicky rolls his eyes and goes back to unpacking the groceries as Nile and Yusuf pick up their argument again in the background. The sound of their two voices twining together has become almost as familiar to Nicky as the sound that Yusuf makes when he rubs his cheeks against Nicky's palms. That sound — like Andy’s barking laugh, like the glint of a flask between Booker’s fingers, like the joyful crinkles around Nile's eyes when she smiles — means that Nicky, wherever he is, is home.</p><p class="p1">“And now I have been bullied into submission,” Joe sighs eventually. “I suppose you will be getting poetry tonight after all, habibi.”</p><p class="p1">Nicky presses his lips together to hide a smile. “Oh, hayati,” he says, “I already knew <em>that.</em>”</p><p class="p1">And sure enough, that night, when Nicky prepares to sleep — Joe praying on his mat in the corner of the room, Nile already snoring in her newly-purchased sleeping bag — Nicky finds a scrap of paper on his pillow. <em>To my dearest love, </em>the outside says in blue pen. <em>The first of a new set.</em></p><p class="p1">Nicky smiles. Tomorrow, perhaps, he'll wake early to cook Yusuf breakfast. He can bring it to bed with pressed coffee when Yusuf wakes, dropping it on his lap alongside a kiss to his forehead. Nile will almost certainly fake a gag and say how sickening they both are, but Nicky can already hear the smile in her voice that she always tries to hide, and he can see the smile on Joe's face, the beautiful curl of his lovely lips. Nicky won't have to say anything, then: Joe will know.</p><p class="p1"> For now, Nicky settles back in bed, into a spot from which he can watch Joe pray. The wall behind Nicky's back is hard, the sheets cold, but not for long. He opens his husband's latest gift and begins to read.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>title from a quote by salma deera: "the center of every poem is this: i have loved you. i have had to deal with that."</p><p>the poem is mine. major apologies to yusuf, whose reputation i'm impugning by implying he would ever write something so amateurish. I'm sorry, yusuf. I didn't want to steal anyone else's poem, so I did my best.</p><p>find me on tumblr as joeandnicky!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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